This is a list of some major inventions / discoveries that
impacted our lives. I am searching the names of Muslims amongst the Inventors /
Discoverers.
Do I find, any? You check!
Does THAT explain why we are so weak, so vulnerable, so
dispensable? You answer.
'Inventions don't generally happen by accident or in a random
order: science and technology progress in a very logical way, with each new
discovery leading on from the last.' say the compilers.
Could it be that we have lately had a culture - specially since
the 13th century, of discouraging inquiry, improvisation, invention, that led
one upon the other to this impasse?
You study and educate. Here we go!
[And, of course, all this is equally true for the Hindus, you
bet].
4–5 billion years ago
Sun starts to produce energy.
10 million years ago.
Humans make the first tools from stone, wood, antlers, and bones.
1–2 million years ago
Humans discover fire.
25,000– 50,000 BCE
Humans first wear clothes.
10,000 BCE
Earliest boats are constructed.
8000– 9000 BCE
Beginnings of human settlements and agriculture.
6000– 7000 BCE
Hand-made bricks first used for construction in the Middle East.
4000 BCE
Iron used for the first time in decorative ornaments.
3500 BCE
Humans invent the wheel.
c1700 BCE
Semites of the Mediterranean develop the alphabet.
0– 1500 BCE
Ancient societies invent some of the first machines for moving water and agriculture.
1000 BCE
Iron Age begins: iron is widely used for making tools and weapons in many parts of the world.
600 BCE
Thales of Miletus discovers static electricity.
c.150– 100 BCE
First gear-driven, precision clockwork machine (the Antikythera mechanism) is developed.
c.50 BCE
Roman engineer Vitruvius perfects the modern, vertical water wheel.
62 CE
Hero of Alexandria, a Greek scientist, pioneers steam power.
105 CE
Ts'ai Lun makes the first paper in China.
27 BCE–395 CE
Romans develop the first, basic concrete called pozzolana.
~600 CE
Windmills are invented in the Middle East.
700– 900 CE
Chinese invent gunpowder and fireworks.
1000 CE ??
Chinese develop eyeglasses by fixing lenses to frames that fit onto people's faces.
1450
Johannes Gutenberg pioneers the modern printing press, using rearrangeable metal letters called movable type.
1470s
The first parachute is sketched on paper by an unknown inventor.
1530s
Gerardus Mercator helps to revolutionize navigation with better mapmaking.
1590
A Dutch spectacle maker named Zacharias Janssen makes the first compound microscope.
~1600
Galileo Galilei designs a basic thermometer.
16th century
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke independently develop microscopes.
1600
William Gilbert publishes his great book De Magnete describing how Earth behaves like a giant magnet. It's the beginning of the scientific study of magnetism.
1609
Galileo Galilei builds a practical telescope and makes new astronomical discoveries.
1643
Galileo's pupil Evangelista Torricelli builds the first mercury barometer for measuring air pressure.
1650s
Christiaan Huygens develops the pendulum clock (using Galileo's earlier discovery that a swinging pendulum can be used to keep time).
1687
Isaac Newton formulates his three laws of motion.
1700s
Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.
1701
English farmer Jethro Tull begins the mechanization of agriculture by inventing the horse-drawn seed drill.
1703
Gottfried Leibniz pioneers the binary number system now used in virtually all computers.
1712
Thomas Newcomen builds the first practical (but stationary) steam engine.
1700s
Christiaan Huygens conceives the internal combustion engine, but never actually builds one.
1737
William Champion develops a commercially viable process for extracting zinc on a large scale.
1757
John Campbell invents the sextant, an improved navigational device that enables sailors to measure latitude.
1730s– 1770s
John Harrison develops reliable chronometers (seafaring clocks) that allow sailors to measure longitude accurately for the first time.
1751
Axel Cronstedt isolates nickel.
1756
Axel Cronstedt notices steam when he boils a rock—and discovers zeolites.
1769
Wolfgang von Kempelen develops a mechanical speaking machine: the world's first speech synthesizer.
1770s
Abraham Darby III builds a pioneering iron bridge at a place now called Ironbridge in England.
~1780
Josiah Wedgwood (or Thomas Massey) invents the pyrometer.
1783
French Brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier make the first practical hot-air balloon.
1800
Italian Alessandro Volta makes the first battery (known as a Voltaic pile).
1801
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the automated cloth-weaving loom. The punched cards it uses to store patterns help to inspire programmable computers.
1803
Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier develop the papermaking machine.
1806
Humphry Davy develops electrolysis into an important chemical technique and uses it to identify a number of new elements.
1807
Humphry Davy develops the electric arc lamp.
1814
George Stephenson builds the first practical steam locomotive.
1816
Robert Stirling invents the efficient Stirling engine.
1820s– 1830s
Michael Faraday builds primitive electric generators and motors.
1827
Joseph Niepce makes the first modern photograph.
1830s
William Sturgeon develops the first practical electric motor.
1830s
Louis Daguerre invents a practical method of taking pin-sharp photographs called Daguerreotypes.
1830s
William Henry Fox Talbot develops a way of making and printing photographs using reverse images called negatives.
1830s– 1840s
Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke, in England, and Samuel Morse, in the United States, develop the electric telegraph (a forerunner of the telephone).
1836
Englishman Francis Petit-Smith and Swedish-American John Ericsson independently develop propellers with blades for ships.
1839
Charles Goodyear finally perfects a durable form of rubber (vulcanized rubber) after many years of unsuccessful experimenting.
1840s
Scottish physicist James Prescott Joule outlines the theory of the conservation of energy.
1840s
Scotsman Alexander Bain invents a primitive fax machine based on chemical technology.
1849
James Francis invents a water turbine now used in many of the world's hydropower plants.
1850s
Henry Bessemer pioneers a new method of making steel in large quantities.
1850s
Louis Pasteur develops pasteurization: a way of preserving food by heating it to kill off bacteria.
1850s
Italian Giovanni Caselli develops a mechanical fax machine called the pantelegraph.
1860s
Frenchman Étienne Lenoir and German Nikolaus Otto pioneer the internal combustion engine.
1860s
James Clerk Maxwell figures out that radio waves must exist and sets out basic laws of electromagnetism.
1860s
Fire extinguishers are invented.
1861
Elisha Graves Otis invents the elevator with built-in safety brake.
1867
Joseph Monier invents reinforced concrete.
1868
Christopher Latham Sholes invents the modern typewriter and QWERTY keyboard.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, though the true ownership of the invention remains controversial even today.
1870s
Thomas Edison develops the phonograph, the first practical method of recording and playing back sound on metal foil.
1870s
Lester Pelton invents a useful new kind of water turbine known as a Pelton wheel.
1877
Thomas Edison invents his sound-recording machine or phonograph—a forerunner of the record player and CD player.
1877
Edward Very invents the flare gun (Very pistol) for sending distress flares at sea.
1880
Thomas Edison patents the modern incandescent electric lamp.
1880
Pierre and Paul-Jacques Curie discover the piezoelectric effect.
1880s
Thomas Edison opens the world's first power plants.
1880s
Charles Chamberland invents the autoclave (steam sterilizing machine).
1880s
Charles and Julia Hall and Paul Heroult independently develop an affordable way of making aluminum.
1880s
Carrie Everson invents new ways of mining silver, gold, and copper.
1881
Jacques d'Arsonval suggests heat energy could be extracted from the oceans.
1883
Charles Eastman invents plastic photographic film.
1884
Charles Parsons develops the steam turbine.
1885
Karl Benz builds a gasoline-engined car.
1886
Josephine Cochran invents the dishwasher.
1888
Friedrich Reinitzer discovers liquid crystals.
1888
Nikola Tesla patents the alternating current (AC) electric induction motor and, in opposition to Thomas Edison, becomes a staunch advocate of AC power.
1899
Everett F. Morse invents the optical pyrometer for measuring temperatures at a safe distance.
1890s
French brothers Joseph and Louis Lumiere invent movie projectors and open the first movie theater.
1890s
German engineer Rudolf Diesel develops his diesel engine—a more efficient internal combustion engine without a sparking plug.
1895
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X rays.
1895
American Ogden Bolton, Jr. invents the electric bicycle.
1901
Guglielmo Marconi sends radio-wave signals across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Canada
1901
The first electric vacuum cleaner is developed.
1903
Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright build the first engine-powered airplane.
1905
Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect.
1905
Samuel J. Bens invents the chainsaw.
1906
Willis Carrier pioneers the air conditioner.
1906
Mikhail Tswett discovers chromatography.
1907
Leo Baekeland develops Bakelite, the first popular synthetic plastic.
1907
Alva Fisher invents the electric clothes washer.
1906-8
Frederick Gardner Cottrell develops the electrostatic smoke precipitator (smokestack pollution scrubber).
1908
American industrialist and engineer Henry Ford launches the Ford Model T, the world's first truly affordable car.
1909
German chemists Fritz Haber and Zygmunt Klemensiewicz develop the glass electrode, enabling very precise measurements of acidity.
1912
American chemist Gilbert Lewis describes the basic chemistry that leads to practical, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries (though they don't appear in a practical, commercial form until the 1990s).
1912
Hans Geiger develops the Geiger counter, a detector for radioactivity.
1919
Francis Aston pioneers the mass spectrometer and uses it to discover many isotopes.
1920s
John Logie Baird develops mechanical television.
1920s
Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television.
1920s
Robert H. Goddard develops the principle of the modern, liquid-fueled space rocket.
1920s
German engineer Gustav Tauschek and American Paul Handel independently develop primitive optical character recognition (OCR) scanning systems.
1920s
Albert W. Hull invents the magnetron, a device that can generate microwaves from electricity.
1921
Karel Capek and his brother coin the word "robot" in a play about artificial humans.
1921
John Larson develops the polygraph ("lie detector") machine.
1928
Thomas Midgley, Jr. invents coolant chemicals for air conditioners and refrigerators.
1928
The electric refrigerator is invented.
1930s
Peter Goldmark pioneers color television.
1930s
Laszlo and Georg Biro pioneer the modern ballpoint pen.
1930s
Maria Telkes creates the first solar-powered house.
1930s
Wallace Carothers develops neoprene (synthetic rubber used in wetsuits) and nylon, the first popular synthetic clothing material.
1930s
Robert Watson Watt oversees the development of radar.
1930s
Arnold Beckman develops the electronic pH meter.
1931
Harold E. Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp for high-speed photography.
1932
Arne Olander discovers the shape memory effect in a gold-cadmium alloy.
1936
W.B. Elwood invents the magnetic reed switch.
1938
Chester Carlson invents the principle of photocopying (xerography).
1938
Roy Plunkett accidentally invents a nonstick plastic coating called Teflon.
1939
Igor Sikorsky builds the first truly practical helicopter.
1940s
English physicists John Randall and Harry Boot develop a compact magnetron for use in airplane radar navigation systems.
1942
Enrico Fermi builds the first nuclear chain reactor at the University of Chicago.
1945
US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW).
1947
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor, which allows electronic equipment to made much smaller and leads to the modern computer revolution.
1949
Bernard Silver and N. Joseph Woodland patent barcodes—striped patterns that are initially developed for marking products in grocery stores.
1950s
Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958.
1950s
Stanford Ovshinksy develops various technologies that make renewable energy more practical, including practical solar cells and improved rechargeable batteries.
1950s
European bus companies experiment with using flywheels as regenerative brakes
1950s
Percy Spencer accidentally discovers how to cook with microwaves, inadvertently inventing the microwave oven.
1954
Indian physicist Narinder Kapany pioneers fiber optics.
1956
First commercial nuclear power is produced at Calder Hall, Cumbria, England.
1957
Soviet Union (Russia and her allies) launch the Sputnik space satellite.
1957
Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters build the first fiber-optic gastroscope.
1958
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently, develop the integrated circuit.
1959
IBM and General Motors develop Design Augmented by Computers-1 (DAC-1), the first computer-aided design (CAD) system.
1960s
Joseph-Armand Bombardier perfects his Ski-Doo® snowmobile.
1960
Theodore Maiman invents the ruby laser.
1962
William Armistead and S. Donald Stookey of Corning Glass Works invent light-sensitive (photochromic) glass.
1963
Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad, one of the first computer-aided design programs.
1964
IBM helps to pioneer e-commerce with an airline ticket reservation system called SABRE.
1965
Frank Pantridge develops the portable defibrillator for treating cardiac arrest patients.
1966
Stephanie Kwolek patents a super-strong plastic called Kevlar.
1967
Japanese company Noritake invents the vacuum fluorescent display (VFD).
1968
Alfred Y. Cho and John R. Arthur, Jr invent a precise way of making single crystals called molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).
1969
World's first solar power station opened in France.
1969
Long before computers become portable, Alan Kay imagines building an electronic book, which he nicknames the Dynabook.
1969
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invent the CCD (charge-coupled device): the light-sensitive chip used in digital cameras, webcams, and other modern optical equipment.
1969
Astronauts walk on the Moon.
1960s
Douglas Engelbart develops the computer mouse.
1960s
James Russell invents compact discs.
1971
Electronic ink is pioneered by Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC.
1971
Ted Hoff builds the first single-chip computer or microprocessor.
1973
Martin Cooper develops the first handheld cellphone (mobile phone).
1973
Robert Metcalfe figures out a simple way of linking computers together that he names Ethernet. Most computers hooked up to the Internet now use it.
1974
First grocery-store purchase of an item coded with a barcode.
1975
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invent public-key cryptography.
1975
Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system.
1976
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world's first personal home computers
1970s– 1980s
James Dyson invents the bagless, cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
1970s-1980s
Scientists including Charles Bennett, Paul Benioff, Richard Feynman, and David Deutsch sketch out how quantum computers might work.
1980s
Japanese electrical pioneer Akio Morita develops the Sony Walkman, the first truly portable player for recorded music.
1981
Stung by Apple's success, IBM releases its own affordable personal computer (PC).
1981
The Space Shuttle makes its maiden voyage.
1981
Patricia Bath develops laser eye surgery for removing cataracts.
1981– 1982
Alexei Ekimov and Louis E. Brus (independently) discover quantum dots.
1983
Compact discs (CDs) are launched as a new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations.
1987
Larry Hornbeck, working at Texas Instruments, develops DLP® projection—now used in many projection TV systems.
1989
Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.
1990
German watchmaking company Junghans introduces the MEGA 1, believed to be the world's first radio-controlled wristwatch.
1991
Linus Torvalds creates the first version of Linux, a collaboratively written computer operating system.
1994
American-born mathematician John Daugman perfects the mathematics that make iris scanning systems possible.
1994
Israeli computer scientists Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty invent VoIP for sending telephone calls over the Internet.
1995
Broadcast.com becomes one of the world's first online radio stations.
1995
Pierre Omidyar launches the eBay auction website.
1996
WRAL-HD broadcasts the first high-definition television (HDTV) signal in the United States.
1997
Electronics companies agree to make Wi-Fi a worldwide standard for wireless Internet.
2001
Apple revolutionizes music listening by unveiling its iPod MP3 music player.
2001
Richard Palmer develops energy-absorbing D3O plastic.
2001
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia is founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.
2001
Bram Cohen develops BitTorrent file-sharing.
2001
Scott White, Nancy Sottos, and colleagues develop self-healing materials.
2002
iRobot Corporation releases the first version of its Roomba® vacuum cleaning robot.
2004
Electronic voting plays a major part in a controversial US Presidential Election.
2004
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discover graphene.
2005
A pioneering low-cost laptop for developing countries called OLPC is announced by MIT computing pioneer Nicholas Negroponte.
2007
Amazon.com launches its Kindle electronic book (e-book) reader.
2007
Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called the iPhone.
2010
Apple releases its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad.
2010
3D TV starts to become more widely available.
2013
Elon Musk announces "hyperloop"—a giant, pneumatic tube transport system.
2015
Supercomputers (the world's fastest computers) are now a mere 30 times less powerful than human brains.
Sun starts to produce energy.
10 million years ago.
Humans make the first tools from stone, wood, antlers, and bones.
1–2 million years ago
Humans discover fire.
25,000– 50,000 BCE
Humans first wear clothes.
10,000 BCE
Earliest boats are constructed.
8000– 9000 BCE
Beginnings of human settlements and agriculture.
6000– 7000 BCE
Hand-made bricks first used for construction in the Middle East.
4000 BCE
Iron used for the first time in decorative ornaments.
3500 BCE
Humans invent the wheel.
c1700 BCE
Semites of the Mediterranean develop the alphabet.
0– 1500 BCE
Ancient societies invent some of the first machines for moving water and agriculture.
1000 BCE
Iron Age begins: iron is widely used for making tools and weapons in many parts of the world.
600 BCE
Thales of Miletus discovers static electricity.
c.150– 100 BCE
First gear-driven, precision clockwork machine (the Antikythera mechanism) is developed.
c.50 BCE
Roman engineer Vitruvius perfects the modern, vertical water wheel.
62 CE
Hero of Alexandria, a Greek scientist, pioneers steam power.
105 CE
Ts'ai Lun makes the first paper in China.
27 BCE–395 CE
Romans develop the first, basic concrete called pozzolana.
~600 CE
Windmills are invented in the Middle East.
700– 900 CE
Chinese invent gunpowder and fireworks.
1000 CE ??
Chinese develop eyeglasses by fixing lenses to frames that fit onto people's faces.
1450
Johannes Gutenberg pioneers the modern printing press, using rearrangeable metal letters called movable type.
1470s
The first parachute is sketched on paper by an unknown inventor.
1530s
Gerardus Mercator helps to revolutionize navigation with better mapmaking.
1590
A Dutch spectacle maker named Zacharias Janssen makes the first compound microscope.
~1600
Galileo Galilei designs a basic thermometer.
16th century
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke independently develop microscopes.
1600
William Gilbert publishes his great book De Magnete describing how Earth behaves like a giant magnet. It's the beginning of the scientific study of magnetism.
1609
Galileo Galilei builds a practical telescope and makes new astronomical discoveries.
1643
Galileo's pupil Evangelista Torricelli builds the first mercury barometer for measuring air pressure.
1650s
Christiaan Huygens develops the pendulum clock (using Galileo's earlier discovery that a swinging pendulum can be used to keep time).
1687
Isaac Newton formulates his three laws of motion.
1700s
Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.
1701
English farmer Jethro Tull begins the mechanization of agriculture by inventing the horse-drawn seed drill.
1703
Gottfried Leibniz pioneers the binary number system now used in virtually all computers.
1712
Thomas Newcomen builds the first practical (but stationary) steam engine.
1700s
Christiaan Huygens conceives the internal combustion engine, but never actually builds one.
1737
William Champion develops a commercially viable process for extracting zinc on a large scale.
1757
John Campbell invents the sextant, an improved navigational device that enables sailors to measure latitude.
1730s– 1770s
John Harrison develops reliable chronometers (seafaring clocks) that allow sailors to measure longitude accurately for the first time.
1751
Axel Cronstedt isolates nickel.
1756
Axel Cronstedt notices steam when he boils a rock—and discovers zeolites.
1769
Wolfgang von Kempelen develops a mechanical speaking machine: the world's first speech synthesizer.
1770s
Abraham Darby III builds a pioneering iron bridge at a place now called Ironbridge in England.
~1780
Josiah Wedgwood (or Thomas Massey) invents the pyrometer.
1783
French Brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier make the first practical hot-air balloon.
1800
Italian Alessandro Volta makes the first battery (known as a Voltaic pile).
1801
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the automated cloth-weaving loom. The punched cards it uses to store patterns help to inspire programmable computers.
1803
Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier develop the papermaking machine.
1806
Humphry Davy develops electrolysis into an important chemical technique and uses it to identify a number of new elements.
1807
Humphry Davy develops the electric arc lamp.
1814
George Stephenson builds the first practical steam locomotive.
1816
Robert Stirling invents the efficient Stirling engine.
1820s– 1830s
Michael Faraday builds primitive electric generators and motors.
1827
Joseph Niepce makes the first modern photograph.
1830s
William Sturgeon develops the first practical electric motor.
1830s
Louis Daguerre invents a practical method of taking pin-sharp photographs called Daguerreotypes.
1830s
William Henry Fox Talbot develops a way of making and printing photographs using reverse images called negatives.
1830s– 1840s
Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke, in England, and Samuel Morse, in the United States, develop the electric telegraph (a forerunner of the telephone).
1836
Englishman Francis Petit-Smith and Swedish-American John Ericsson independently develop propellers with blades for ships.
1839
Charles Goodyear finally perfects a durable form of rubber (vulcanized rubber) after many years of unsuccessful experimenting.
1840s
Scottish physicist James Prescott Joule outlines the theory of the conservation of energy.
1840s
Scotsman Alexander Bain invents a primitive fax machine based on chemical technology.
1849
James Francis invents a water turbine now used in many of the world's hydropower plants.
1850s
Henry Bessemer pioneers a new method of making steel in large quantities.
1850s
Louis Pasteur develops pasteurization: a way of preserving food by heating it to kill off bacteria.
1850s
Italian Giovanni Caselli develops a mechanical fax machine called the pantelegraph.
1860s
Frenchman Étienne Lenoir and German Nikolaus Otto pioneer the internal combustion engine.
1860s
James Clerk Maxwell figures out that radio waves must exist and sets out basic laws of electromagnetism.
1860s
Fire extinguishers are invented.
1861
Elisha Graves Otis invents the elevator with built-in safety brake.
1867
Joseph Monier invents reinforced concrete.
1868
Christopher Latham Sholes invents the modern typewriter and QWERTY keyboard.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, though the true ownership of the invention remains controversial even today.
1870s
Thomas Edison develops the phonograph, the first practical method of recording and playing back sound on metal foil.
1870s
Lester Pelton invents a useful new kind of water turbine known as a Pelton wheel.
1877
Thomas Edison invents his sound-recording machine or phonograph—a forerunner of the record player and CD player.
1877
Edward Very invents the flare gun (Very pistol) for sending distress flares at sea.
1880
Thomas Edison patents the modern incandescent electric lamp.
1880
Pierre and Paul-Jacques Curie discover the piezoelectric effect.
1880s
Thomas Edison opens the world's first power plants.
1880s
Charles Chamberland invents the autoclave (steam sterilizing machine).
1880s
Charles and Julia Hall and Paul Heroult independently develop an affordable way of making aluminum.
1880s
Carrie Everson invents new ways of mining silver, gold, and copper.
1881
Jacques d'Arsonval suggests heat energy could be extracted from the oceans.
1883
Charles Eastman invents plastic photographic film.
1884
Charles Parsons develops the steam turbine.
1885
Karl Benz builds a gasoline-engined car.
1886
Josephine Cochran invents the dishwasher.
1888
Friedrich Reinitzer discovers liquid crystals.
1888
Nikola Tesla patents the alternating current (AC) electric induction motor and, in opposition to Thomas Edison, becomes a staunch advocate of AC power.
1899
Everett F. Morse invents the optical pyrometer for measuring temperatures at a safe distance.
1890s
French brothers Joseph and Louis Lumiere invent movie projectors and open the first movie theater.
1890s
German engineer Rudolf Diesel develops his diesel engine—a more efficient internal combustion engine without a sparking plug.
1895
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X rays.
1895
American Ogden Bolton, Jr. invents the electric bicycle.
1901
Guglielmo Marconi sends radio-wave signals across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Canada
1901
The first electric vacuum cleaner is developed.
1903
Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright build the first engine-powered airplane.
1905
Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect.
1905
Samuel J. Bens invents the chainsaw.
1906
Willis Carrier pioneers the air conditioner.
1906
Mikhail Tswett discovers chromatography.
1907
Leo Baekeland develops Bakelite, the first popular synthetic plastic.
1907
Alva Fisher invents the electric clothes washer.
1906-8
Frederick Gardner Cottrell develops the electrostatic smoke precipitator (smokestack pollution scrubber).
1908
American industrialist and engineer Henry Ford launches the Ford Model T, the world's first truly affordable car.
1909
German chemists Fritz Haber and Zygmunt Klemensiewicz develop the glass electrode, enabling very precise measurements of acidity.
1912
American chemist Gilbert Lewis describes the basic chemistry that leads to practical, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries (though they don't appear in a practical, commercial form until the 1990s).
1912
Hans Geiger develops the Geiger counter, a detector for radioactivity.
1919
Francis Aston pioneers the mass spectrometer and uses it to discover many isotopes.
1920s
John Logie Baird develops mechanical television.
1920s
Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television.
1920s
Robert H. Goddard develops the principle of the modern, liquid-fueled space rocket.
1920s
German engineer Gustav Tauschek and American Paul Handel independently develop primitive optical character recognition (OCR) scanning systems.
1920s
Albert W. Hull invents the magnetron, a device that can generate microwaves from electricity.
1921
Karel Capek and his brother coin the word "robot" in a play about artificial humans.
1921
John Larson develops the polygraph ("lie detector") machine.
1928
Thomas Midgley, Jr. invents coolant chemicals for air conditioners and refrigerators.
1928
The electric refrigerator is invented.
1930s
Peter Goldmark pioneers color television.
1930s
Laszlo and Georg Biro pioneer the modern ballpoint pen.
1930s
Maria Telkes creates the first solar-powered house.
1930s
Wallace Carothers develops neoprene (synthetic rubber used in wetsuits) and nylon, the first popular synthetic clothing material.
1930s
Robert Watson Watt oversees the development of radar.
1930s
Arnold Beckman develops the electronic pH meter.
1931
Harold E. Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp for high-speed photography.
1932
Arne Olander discovers the shape memory effect in a gold-cadmium alloy.
1936
W.B. Elwood invents the magnetic reed switch.
1938
Chester Carlson invents the principle of photocopying (xerography).
1938
Roy Plunkett accidentally invents a nonstick plastic coating called Teflon.
1939
Igor Sikorsky builds the first truly practical helicopter.
1940s
English physicists John Randall and Harry Boot develop a compact magnetron for use in airplane radar navigation systems.
1942
Enrico Fermi builds the first nuclear chain reactor at the University of Chicago.
1945
US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW).
1947
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor, which allows electronic equipment to made much smaller and leads to the modern computer revolution.
1949
Bernard Silver and N. Joseph Woodland patent barcodes—striped patterns that are initially developed for marking products in grocery stores.
1950s
Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958.
1950s
Stanford Ovshinksy develops various technologies that make renewable energy more practical, including practical solar cells and improved rechargeable batteries.
1950s
European bus companies experiment with using flywheels as regenerative brakes
1950s
Percy Spencer accidentally discovers how to cook with microwaves, inadvertently inventing the microwave oven.
1954
Indian physicist Narinder Kapany pioneers fiber optics.
1956
First commercial nuclear power is produced at Calder Hall, Cumbria, England.
1957
Soviet Union (Russia and her allies) launch the Sputnik space satellite.
1957
Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters build the first fiber-optic gastroscope.
1958
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently, develop the integrated circuit.
1959
IBM and General Motors develop Design Augmented by Computers-1 (DAC-1), the first computer-aided design (CAD) system.
1960s
Joseph-Armand Bombardier perfects his Ski-Doo® snowmobile.
1960
Theodore Maiman invents the ruby laser.
1962
William Armistead and S. Donald Stookey of Corning Glass Works invent light-sensitive (photochromic) glass.
1963
Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad, one of the first computer-aided design programs.
1964
IBM helps to pioneer e-commerce with an airline ticket reservation system called SABRE.
1965
Frank Pantridge develops the portable defibrillator for treating cardiac arrest patients.
1966
Stephanie Kwolek patents a super-strong plastic called Kevlar.
1967
Japanese company Noritake invents the vacuum fluorescent display (VFD).
1968
Alfred Y. Cho and John R. Arthur, Jr invent a precise way of making single crystals called molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).
1969
World's first solar power station opened in France.
1969
Long before computers become portable, Alan Kay imagines building an electronic book, which he nicknames the Dynabook.
1969
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invent the CCD (charge-coupled device): the light-sensitive chip used in digital cameras, webcams, and other modern optical equipment.
1969
Astronauts walk on the Moon.
1960s
Douglas Engelbart develops the computer mouse.
1960s
James Russell invents compact discs.
1971
Electronic ink is pioneered by Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC.
1971
Ted Hoff builds the first single-chip computer or microprocessor.
1973
Martin Cooper develops the first handheld cellphone (mobile phone).
1973
Robert Metcalfe figures out a simple way of linking computers together that he names Ethernet. Most computers hooked up to the Internet now use it.
1974
First grocery-store purchase of an item coded with a barcode.
1975
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invent public-key cryptography.
1975
Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system.
1976
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world's first personal home computers
1970s– 1980s
James Dyson invents the bagless, cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
1970s-1980s
Scientists including Charles Bennett, Paul Benioff, Richard Feynman, and David Deutsch sketch out how quantum computers might work.
1980s
Japanese electrical pioneer Akio Morita develops the Sony Walkman, the first truly portable player for recorded music.
1981
Stung by Apple's success, IBM releases its own affordable personal computer (PC).
1981
The Space Shuttle makes its maiden voyage.
1981
Patricia Bath develops laser eye surgery for removing cataracts.
1981– 1982
Alexei Ekimov and Louis E. Brus (independently) discover quantum dots.
1983
Compact discs (CDs) are launched as a new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations.
1987
Larry Hornbeck, working at Texas Instruments, develops DLP® projection—now used in many projection TV systems.
1989
Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.
1990
German watchmaking company Junghans introduces the MEGA 1, believed to be the world's first radio-controlled wristwatch.
1991
Linus Torvalds creates the first version of Linux, a collaboratively written computer operating system.
1994
American-born mathematician John Daugman perfects the mathematics that make iris scanning systems possible.
1994
Israeli computer scientists Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty invent VoIP for sending telephone calls over the Internet.
1995
Broadcast.com becomes one of the world's first online radio stations.
1995
Pierre Omidyar launches the eBay auction website.
1996
WRAL-HD broadcasts the first high-definition television (HDTV) signal in the United States.
1997
Electronics companies agree to make Wi-Fi a worldwide standard for wireless Internet.
2001
Apple revolutionizes music listening by unveiling its iPod MP3 music player.
2001
Richard Palmer develops energy-absorbing D3O plastic.
2001
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia is founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.
2001
Bram Cohen develops BitTorrent file-sharing.
2001
Scott White, Nancy Sottos, and colleagues develop self-healing materials.
2002
iRobot Corporation releases the first version of its Roomba® vacuum cleaning robot.
2004
Electronic voting plays a major part in a controversial US Presidential Election.
2004
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discover graphene.
2005
A pioneering low-cost laptop for developing countries called OLPC is announced by MIT computing pioneer Nicholas Negroponte.
2007
Amazon.com launches its Kindle electronic book (e-book) reader.
2007
Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called the iPhone.
2010
Apple releases its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad.
2010
3D TV starts to become more widely available.
2013
Elon Musk announces "hyperloop"—a giant, pneumatic tube transport system.
2015
Supercomputers (the world's fastest computers) are now a mere 30 times less powerful than human brains.
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